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Updated: Jul 6, 2025
Quantitative Static and Dynamic Assessment of Balance Control in Stroke Patients
Published on: May 17, 2020
A Quantitative, Digital Method to Analyze Human Figure Drawings as a Tool to Assess Body Representations Distortions
Isabella Martinelli1,2, Stephanie Konik1, Eleonora Guanziroli2
1MySpace Lab, Department of Clinical NeurosciencesUniversity Hospital Lausanne (CHUV) 1011 Lausanne Switzerland.
Objective:
Human figure drawings are widely used in clinical practice as a qualitative indication of Body Representations (BRs) alterations in stroke patients. The objective of this study is to present and validate the use of a new app called QDraw for the quantitative analysis of drawings and to investigate whether this analysis can reveal distortions of BRs in chronic stroke patients.
Results:
QDraw has proven to generate reliable data as compared to manual scoring and in terms of inter-rater reliability, as shown by the high correlation coefficients. Moreover, human figure drawings from chronic stroke patients demonstrated a distortion of upper limb perception, as shown by a significantly higher arm length asymmetry compared to legs, whereas no difference was found in healthy controls.
Conclusions:
The present study supports the use of quantitative, digital methods (the QDraw app) to analyze human figure drawings as a tool to evaluate BRs distortions in stroke patients.
